Half-Truth
by Higurazel
Summary: Our protagonist finds himself waking with no memory in a town gripped by a thick fog. Secret truths are hidden out there, but will he and his companions survive long enough to find them?
1. The Fool (Alone in the Town)

In that pink haze that comes between the deepness of sleep and first stirrings of waking life, he could feel the headache approaching. Like a searing light at the end of a tunnel, he was speeding towards it with no hope of slowing down. He burst into consciousness with a jolt, hands reflexively coming up to his temples as pain started to drill behind his eyes. His mouth was full of an awful, sour taste that clung stubbornly to his teeth and tongue, turning his empty stomach. His nostrils were bombarded with a panoply of offensive scents. Bile, burned hair, gasoline. He could feel a moist surface beneath him, soft and moldy. Cushions? He was sitting, he could feel that much.

His head was resting back on something that clung to his hair and, after weighing up his options, he slowly opened his eyes.

The ceiling was stained and pitted, a veritable map of filth that sat just a little too close to his face for comfort. Shadows stretched across it, flickering and jumping as their light-source stuttered in the gloom. He lowered his head, grimacing at the cracking sound erupting from his neck as everything popped into place. From the corner of his eye he spotted a dark pool at the side of his chair, reeking of bile and a half-digested meal... At least it solved the mystery of the foul taste moldering in his mouth.

The room was small, perhaps no more than twelve square feet, his festering old chair propped against one wall. Ahead of him was an old metal door, riddled with illegible graffiti, a small window set in it letting through the barest amount of dim grey light. By it was edged the frame of a thick and heavy looking television, antenna bent into a brutal shape that summoned up thoughts of particularly frightening modern art. The screen was pierced and shattered by a dark shape, but the fragments still in place showed a steady stream of static, filling the room with snowy interference. He wasn't even sure if that should be possible...

Such thoughts were rushed out of his mind when he took a closer look at the shape slumped in front of the ruined television set. A human figure, dressed in black and on its hands and knees. The head was embedded inside the television, black scorch marks snaking their way down its pale neck. Its limbs were contorted in a horrific fashion, as though it had been struggling before settling into its final position, dying in mid spasm.

He pulled his gaze away, scrunching his eyes closed and tried to get his breathing under control. His heart fought desperately to smash its way through his chest, the pounding of blood filling his ears, his stomach contorting itself into something resembling the television antenna. What the hell was going on here? Where was he? What had happened? Why?

A tinny, warped noise from the TV brought his mind back from the precipice of panic. An advertising jingle, mangled by interference and no small amount of internal damage to the hardware. The shape of a can appeared on the few remaining shards of screen, some sort of soft drink dripping with condensation. A woman's garbled voice echoed through the speakers, sounding like she was at the bottom of a derelict well in the middle of nowhere.

"Arcana Zero. Great taste, no sugar. Unleash your potential!"

The voice died off and was swallowed up by the static, a multitude of whispered mechanical voices hissing across one another. He stared at the screen, faded back to a field of signal snow, his eyes aching as he attempted to make out shapes in the grey and white.

The smells began to become too much, the stale and putrid air settling deep in his lungs and making him groggy. He pushed himself up from the chair, trying not to think too hard about the wet noise the cushioned armrest made against his bare palms. His legs were shaky, but took his weight as he uneasily stood upright. His hair brushed against the ceiling tiles and he grimaced, making for the door as quickly as he could while giving the body and the television a wide berth.

He reached out and placed a hand on the rusted handle, curling his fingers around it. A memory burst into life within his skull, his hand locking with someone else's. A handshake in the foggy morning air. A smile beneath a mess of hair and a baseball cap. He recoiled for a moment and the memory was gone. Sparks seemed to dance across his eyes and he blinked furiously, attempting to dispel them.

When his vision returned to normal, he was staring at a single piece of graffiti in the jumble of colours that swirled across the rotted door.

"Open the door. Search for the truth."

Tentatively, he reached for the handle again. Locking his fingers around it, he pulled the door open and let in the air of the outside world.


	2. The Magician(Never Forgive Never Forget)

Grey.

It stretched out around him in every direction, leaving him an island in a sea of gloom. The fog pooled around his feet, obscuring the ground if he stopped moving and dispersing it for long enough. Buildings rose up out of the mists periodically, their dismal grey facades doing little to shake up the monochrome monotony of the world around him. Alongside him ran the awning and platforms of a train station, unlit and coated in a veneer of dust and blackening oxides - Dead for what must have been years. The building behind him must have been some sort of waiting room in another life, but he tried his best not to dwell on the memories of what he had seen inside.

Left and right gave him nothing but the grey ocean, the tops of trees visible in the distance to his right. Dead ahead, the fog eventually gave birth to tighter collections of buildings. A town? More civilisation than he would find standing around here, that much was for certain. The husks of streetlights were visible when he strained his eyes, forming what must be a road towards the town. With little option available to him, he started to walk.

A pale glow made a feeble attempt to peek through the cloud cover, the sun and its warmth robbed of any power here. He shivered a little as the cooling mist crept around his ankles, snaking away every now and again to reveal cracked paving stones and streaks of brown and black across the street, streaks that he tried his hardest to avoid.

Time passed. Or at least, he assumed it did. The sickly sunlight didn't seem to move across the sky and the town ahead didn't seem to get any closer as he travelled. All he had to go on was the creeping ache in his legs and the changes in the derelict buildings that he passed. They were all boxy and grey, their windows blackened when they were still in place. Occasional scrawls of graffiti lined a wall, sometimes spelling out some obscure piece of poetry, other times providing nothing but scrawls. As he passed a long, dark alley between two buildings, one such message caught his eye.

FIND A BIGGER POND.

It was hastily scrawled in black paint above a distressingly detailed stencil image of a frog being dissected. Something about the way the organs were painted, so tightly packed and painstakingly detailed that they almost seemed to be pulsating beneath the comparatively crude image of the scalpel. His eyes were drawn further and further into the centre of the image, mesmerising him until the point that he feared he'd be lost in it forever, if not for the noise that started to echo through the mists.

Scraping, stuttering sounds like metal being dragged across uneven concrete. He froze, only his eyes darting right in the direction of the noise, peering into the mist. There was nothing there, but the sound persisted, getting louder. Soon joined by soft, meaty thuds in a rhythm.

Bare footsteps.

The moment the dark silhouette starting to emerge from the fog, he moved. It was possibly humanoid, but definitely very broken. He caught only a glimpse of its hunched shape before he threw himself into the alleyway, hands scraping against the rough ground as he scampered forward on hands and knees, scrabbling to get himself behind a foul-smelling dumpster. He tucked his legs up to his chest and shut his eyes tight, fighting to hear the noise of that... thing over the cacophony that was his own pulse.

It got louder.

Louder.

In a panic, with every muscle in his body crying out from tensing up, he slowly peered around the dumpster.

In an instant he whipped his head back into safety, shutting his eyes again and trying not to scream or gasp. It was standing right at the opening of the alleyway, a black shape framed by fog. It was thin, impossibly thin, with long limbs that jutted out at just the wrong angles. The face was obscured by some kind of mask, and in its grip was a battered, rusted katana, its blade chipped and flaking. It hadn't been looking his way, but he was now all too aware that the sounds had stopped.

In his minds eye, he saw it turning on the spot, hunkering down into a starting position before setting off in a sprint down the alleyway, ready to gut him with that mangled blade. He clutched at his chest, desperate to get his breathing under control. Every neuron firing telling him to get to his feet and take off running. His bleeding palms pressed against the ground, fingers tensing and ready to push himself up. he began to count it off.

3

2

The scraping noise picked up again, the uneven smacks of its feet trailing away. It was carrying on its way, up the road towards the train station. Within a tortured minute, the sound had faded away completely, and he was left to gasp in peace.

"Is... Is it gone?"

The voice from behind him set him off completely, bolting away from the dumpster and colliding with a hidden mound of garbage bags, sending him collapsing in a heap on the floor.

"Holy crap! Are you ok?"

He glanced over his shoulder and saw a face poking out from the debris in the dumpster, framed by a shock of red hair and a pair of vibrant yellow headphones. A young man, brows arched in concern as he took stock of the situation.

"Dude, you took a hell of a spill." He said, extracting himself from among the trash and ambling over, extending his hand. "Sorry about that."

He stared for a moment at the young man's hand, feeling an undeniable level of unease as he reached out and took it. He was hoisted to his feet gently, the strangers free hand patting him on the shoulder, picking off a stray stained piece of tissue.

"There ya go, good as new. You ok?"

He nodded in response.

"Again, sorry. I thought I saw something earlier and climbed up into that dumpster for safety. Been sitting there a while trying to get up the nerve to come out."

He broke hand contact.

"Hey, it's no worse in there than it is in the rest of this alley." The stranger chuckled. "I'm Yosuke by the way."

He opened his mouth to respond, but nothing flowed out. Alarm flushed through him and it clearly showed on his face.

"Oh shit, are you mute or...? Wait, do you speak Japanese? Is anything I'm saying making sense?"

"No, I understand," he told Yosuke, taken aback a little by the sound of his own voice. "And I can talk. I just... I don't remember."

"Don't remember your name?"

He shook his head.

"Well, given what the hell else I've seen in this town today, I'm not going to question that too much. Amnesia I can deal with. Amnesia doesn't come limping through the fog with huge goddamn knives and teeth and... Stuff." Yosuke got a far away look in his eyes, clearly lost in an upsetting memory.

"What are those things?"

"Dude, I've got just as little a clue as you do." Yosuke shrugged. "Just lurching about here. I'm hoping things are better closer into town."

"That's where you're heading?"

"Yeah, I was on my way to a school reunion when this fog rolled in. Then just everything went to hell. No people around, no sign of life besides those things. Though even before that, this place was too damn quiet. Who am I kidding? Inaba's always been quiet. Nothing ever happens here."

"Inaba?" At least this place had a name. Putting a label on it was oddly comforting.

"Yeah, the town we're in. Do you not know where you are?"

He arched his brow at Yosuke, slowly motioning to the side of his head.

"Right, right, memory." Yosuke looked distinctly uncomfortable. "Uh, let's just say that super thick fog and monsters were never a normal thing here. About the only exciting event we ever had was when the Yakitori place nearly burned down. Local paper ran with that for what felt like months. The school had a bunch of sports teams but we were never big enough to have any meaningful rivalries. Too far out in the sticks I guess. Boring place is what I'm getting at, you know?"

He nodded softly. The events of the day so far had been anything but boring. "Things have changed since you've been away, clearly."

Yosuke froze up, confusion glazing over his expression.

"Away?"

"Yeah, you said you were coming back for a school reunion. Where were you before here?"

"I..." Yosuke trailed off, his eyes flitting from left to right. "I don't remember. I lived in Inaba."

"Yeah, but where did you live after that?"

"After that? After that I..."

Yosuke took a step back, resting his arm on the dumpster, his breathing becoming rapid fire and shallow. He turned his head, looking about himself in a panic.

"Hey, it's ok," he told the redhead, "Did I say something-"

"Stop!" Yosuke hissed, backing away and nearly tripping over a discarded can. "You... You just stay away from me." He stumbled as he turned on the spot, fleeing up the alleyway at a sprint, quickly disappearing into the fog. His echoing footsteps dying away quickly and leaving nothing but silence.

In an instant, the traveller was once again all alone.


	3. The Chariot (No-one Love You)

The monolith was upon him before he was even aware of it.

Pushing its way out of the fog, a concrete giant birthed from nothingness. Every other building on his journey had been no fewer than two storeys tall, whereas this monstrosity would have dominated the skyline if indeed there had been one to dominate. Black plastic bags were scattered at the base of its walls, littering the ground with offerings of refuse to this bleak deity.

Above, bolted into the wall were enormous letters that he assumed had once been brightly lit from within. Now they were powerless and dark, gloomily spelling out JUNES for an audience of one. From the look and scale of things it appeared to be a department store and further on down the road he could see the wall turn to glass panels, delving inwards to indicate an entrance.

He made his way along the path, taking his time and doing his best to scan his surroundings for threats. A few times he thought he could hear scraping, scratching sounds echoing deep within the fog, but they disappeared when he stopped to strain his ears. For now he appeared to be safe, but there was no telling just how long that would be true.

When he reached the glass panes, he found them caked in dust and scratched up by weather and neglect. If he were to be honest with himself, he wouldn't have expected anything else. He got closer, pressing his face up to the glass and peering inside, cupping his hands to block out what little glare remained. He scanned his eyes over the building's interior, squinting into the darkness.

From what he could see, everything was in place with no signs of chaos or damage. Darkness swallowed up all but the most immediate surroundings, but he could make out an entrance foyer with doors leading further in and a set of elevators off to one side. A set of literature carousels were set up against one wall, full of faded old leaflets, itineraries and maps.

He froze.

Maps.

That was exactly what he needed.

He pulled back from the glass and started hurriedly making his way across towards what he assumed was the front door, bleached out posters in the windows advertising low prices on unidentifiable products. He approached the door and gave it a shove, getting absolutely nowhere for his efforts. Locked. Again, he wasn't sure what else he expected. He pushed harder, reasoning that perhaps it was just stuck with all the grime and filth that seemed to coat damn near everything in this town. Still nothing.

For the briefest moment, a violent and impulsive thought raced through his head. This whole section of wall was glass. A thin, fragile barrier stood between him and a means of finding his way around this place. A swift kick and he could be through in no time.

No. Stupid, he told himself. This place, derelict though it looked, could still be hooked up to some sort of intruder alarm. The last thing he wanted was for a siren to start blaring out and alerting every... Thing in the nearby vicinity just where he was.

That said, he had no way of knowing if that creature he had seen earlier was unique. Perhaps it was the only such monster in this town. The denizens could just be himself, it and that oddball Yosuke. A glance behind himself into the mist made him recalculate those odds. If he was fast enough about it, he could get in and out with little time-wasting. Maybe grab an armful of maps and get out to somewhere secluded and safe before sorting through what he needed. Hell, that might even help him in the long run. While any nearby threats were closing in on Junes and its alarm, he would be far away and hidden.

Still, the moment to think had also sparked a small fire of doubt in him. There was no way he was going to be able to get through that glass in a single kick. As thin as it looked, a whole lot of force was going to need to be exerted on it to make a break. And even if he did manage to break through without shattering his foot, he'd probably be handily slit open by the broken glass. He muttered under his breath and looked around, his attention eventually honing in on half a brick lying in the dust near a split bag of food waste. A little grin tugged at the corner of his mouth as a rebellious jolt set off somewhere in his psyche.

He knelt down and closed his fingers around the brick, grimacing a little at the unexpected cool and moist coating around the rough texture. It was the sort of thing he knew he would be trying to wipe off for the next few days, always convinced it was still adhered to his skin. He stood up and lifted the brick with him, letting out an unexpected yelp at the eruption of black and brown that came forth as a horde of insects were disturbed from their hiding place. It seemed like there were hundreds of them, far too many to be crammed under such a small chunk of shelter, their shining bodies scuttling away into the garbage, a few frantically scrabbling over his bare hand. To his own credit, he didn't drop the brick or even move from the spot, he swallowed down his revulsion and swatted away the vermin with his free hand, shuddering at the dark and oily stain that one left against his skin as it was dashed away.

He wheeled around on the spot, winding his arm back and letting the missile fly with everything he had. It turned in the air before striking the glass with one of its jagged corners. It was through an instant, the glass shattering and falling to the ground like a glittering rain, the brick continuing on its trajectory and breaking through more glass further into the foyer. He stood in awe for a moment, marvelling at the small act of devastation that he had just caused, bathing in it for a second before coming to his senses. He rushed inside, ducking his head as he passed through what had once been the door, trampling crystaline shards beneath his shoes, crunching like tightly packed snow.

He stumbled upright into the foyer, making straight for the white plastic carousels and the bundles of card and paper within. In the panic and exhileration, he jumped from one to the next, clutching up bundles of useless information before discarding it when he found what he thought he was looking for. After a few false starts and scrabbling around on the floor, looking amongst things he had dropped, he finally held up a map of Inaba. Very helpfully, he could make out a large star marked "Junes" on the map. That gave him a good place to start. Once he got to a place of safety he would-

The shriek that echoed out from deeper within the store seemed to reverberate through his skull and made his teeth ache. It was a primal noise, a violent noise. Something born from fear and hate and frustration and loss. Something more powerful than all of its constituent parts. It was a very human howl, emanating from what he hoped was a very human epicentre. He stood in place for a moment, paralysed by the possibilities that this new stimulus was throwing his way. It bounced across the walls for a few seconds more before dying away completely, leaving him in silence.

No, not silence. Somewhere within the building, a little further in from where he was standing, he could make out something quiet and breathless. Exhausted sobbing was carrying weakly over the air, punctuated by occasional grunts of exertion and something fleshy striking metal. He could feel curiosity getting the better of him as he straightened up. Tucking the map into his back pocket, he set off into the department store, crouching low to the ground as he found himself among row after row of squat aisles filled with foul-smelling meat and produce. However long the power had gone out, the refrigeration in Junes had clearly been of utmost importance. The spoiled food made his eyes water as he skulked past, homing in on the noise. Turning a corner, he found himself face to face with the source.

A girl dressed in green and yellow, her hair short and practical was gripping onto the aisle with every ounce of effort she had. Tears were coursing down her rounded face as she lifted her leg, delivering kick after vicious kick to an inert mass on the floor, knocking it against the aisle. Every connection was partnered with a grunt from the girl, a wet noise from the shape on the ground, and a metallic jolt as the display stand was knocked into. She hadn't noticed him as yet, and from this new vantage point he could hear her spluttering half-formed sentences mingling with her desperate sobbing.

"... I told you..."

"... You're not..."

"That isn't true..."

She gave one last thunderous kick to the heap on the ground, splitting it somewhere and sending a cascade of dark and steaming ichor spreading out across the store floor. She fell heavily to her knees, head dropping and shoulders shaking with ragged breaths. She made no attempt to move from her spot, even as the liquids leaking from the beaten mess started to pool around her. Whatever had happened here, he felt as though he were perhaps not best equipped to handle it. He started to back away as quietly as he could, keeping himself low as he did so.

He wasn't sure whether it was his extended leg that caught the edge of the aisle, or perhaps the hem of his jacket. He just swiftly became aware of that moment of resistance where there shouldn't have been before a cascade of cans began to clatter down from their shelf and onto the floor, bouncing and spinning as they did so. In any other context, the incident would probably be classed as a minor noise. Here and now, though, it was a deafening cacophony that rang out for eternity, echoing down the aisle and assaulting the ears of all around.

By the time he looked up from the small devastation that he had caused, she was already upon him. A forearm pressed up against his throat as a fist formed over his face, ready to come down in an instant and strike him like a hammer. He raised his arms, hands open, surrendering and stumbling through an explanation.

"Wait, wait!" He cried out, trying to press himself into the floor. He was pinned down by her legs and he found himself wondering how someone so small could exhibit so much strength. "I didn't mean to startle you. I'm not here to fight, I just heard noises and came to investigate."

The girl glared down at him, a look of desperation and fatigue behind her bloodshot eyes.

"Who are you?" She demanded, her voice croaking.

"At the risk of getting hit, I don't know." He admitted. "I woke up in this town, or rather, just outside it. I don't know what's going on here or even where here is."

Her brow wrinkled and he wasn't sure if it was confusion or anger.

"I know this place is called Inaba, but that's only because some guy I met earlier told me. I don't know how I got here, who I am or why I'm here. Please, if I knew anything I'd tell you. You quite literally have the upper hand here."

She smirked a little at that, and he could feel a slight rush of relief as the weight pressed against his body shifted. She stood up and offered her hand which he gladly took.

"Not the best place in the world to be running around with no memory," she said as she pulled him to his feet. "Then again, not a great place to be running around anyway."

"Yeah," he agreed, "you look like you've been having a hell of a time of things." He motioned to the bleeding figure behind her. She very pointedly did not look back at it. "You have all your faculties? Or are you like me?"

"Nope, I'm all intact, I think." She rubbed the side of her head absently. "I'm Chie."

"Nice to meet you Chie, given the circumstances. What are you doing in here?"

"My friend and I got separated. I tried looking for her in here, there were her shoe prints in the dust and I..." She trailed off, composing herself. "I found that thing back there, it attacked me and I just... I lashed out it."

"All the better you did," he said, "I've seen something else outside that I would rather not come across again. Putting it out of commission, well, you're ok now."

"I sure don't feel it." Chie muttered.

He nodded, his eyes lingering on the broken thing behind her.


	4. High Priestess(Rain of Brass Petals)

The further inside the department store they wandered, the more snippets of normality he began to spot. Nothing major and never more than a glimpse at a time but there was finally a sense here that this had been a real town once. Merchandising displays sitting untouched since their set-up, neatly arranged racks of garments, the distant hum of electricity pulsing through decayed walls. The longer he spent her, the more alive the building felt to him. Especially when compared to the desolation outside. Before long, he and his companion arrived in an open area, dotted with tables and chairs with a few scattered and empty stalls haunting the periphery.

"The food court," Chie said, the first words that had passed between them since making their way out of the foyer, she winced as they echoed across the room louder than expected, disappearing into the deeper expanses of the building. The two of them stood in silence for a moment, waiting breathlessly for the shuffling footsteps of attackers that never came. Just the two of them alone with the hum.

"Looks like it hasn't seen much use lately," he murmured as his gaze floated over plastic chairs and tables.

"We used to hang out here all the time."

"You and that friend of yours?"

"Me and Yukiko and..." She trailed off, frowning.

"What's wrong?" He asked, reflexively checking over his shoulder.

"There were others too." Chie said faintly, running her hand over the back of a chair as she walked past it. "We all used to meet here. I remember that, I just don't remember who they were."

"Friends from school?"

"Maybe," she admitted, giving a little shake of her head as if to loosen the mist of confusion. "Let's just find Yukiko. I don't like thinking about what else I might have forgotten." She strode off, further into the hall.

"Yeah, you and me both." he quietly agreed, looking at a poster mounted on a nearby wall. It showed a rock band made up of energetic young people all striking poses on a stage. Some leapt through the air while others held instruments aloft in triumph. The poster had faded into illegibility and each of the band members had been brutally defaced, scratches and smears obscuring their features. All that was left untouched was some sort of bizarre mascot at the back of the photo with its vibrant blue, red and gold tones still clear through the decay. He couldn't help but feel a little uneasy looking at it. Such a bizarre creature, like the unholy amalgamation of a bear, a barrel and a circus clown. Just how had something like that been given the all clear as a mascot?

He shuddered as he turned away, swearing that he could feel that thing in the photo watching him leave, tracking him with its glassy yellow eyes.

He caught up with Chie after a brief jog, waiting at the bottom of a long dead escalator. He followed as she began to make her way upwards, shoes clacking against the still metallic steps. There wasn't a lot of room to see around his companion, but the stairway seemed to go up for a while, tucked into the side of the storey they were in. What little light there was found itself quickly snuffed out.

"This friend of yours must have gotten herself pretty lost," he said, planting his hand on the rail. With no light to guide him, he didn't want to take the risk of tripping and gashing himself open on the metal steps. If the monsters in this town didn't get him, he was sure the tetanus would.

"I figure if we go up high, we'll have a better chance of spotting her." Chie answered back, her voice distorted by the confines of the stairway.

"Vantage point, got it." He nodded.

They continued the climb in silence. Just the sound of their reverberating footsteps accompanying them. The tap of Chie's hard shoe soles and the clack of his own, bouncing back in their own conversation as the pair climbed higher.

 _Tap, clack, tap, clack._

"So how long have you and Yukiko known each other?" He asked.

 _Tap, clack, tap, clack._

"Man, it feels like forever. It's hard to think of a time when we weren't side by side, you know?"

 _Clack, tap, clack, tap._

"That's why you're worried about her?"

 _Tap, clack, tap, clack._

"She's my best friend and she needs me."

 _Clack, tap, clack, tap, skrrcht._

In unison, the two of them froze.

 _Skrrcht_.

It echoed up from the bottom of the escalator, nestling into their ears.

 _Skrrcht_.

"That's not you, is it?" Chie's voice sounded tight and strangled from up ahead.

 _Skrrcht_.

He could feel dampness across his forehead and his hands aching from gripping the railing. His legs trembled and he couldn't remember the last time they had felt so vulnerable. He thought he could remember pulling himself tight into the foetal position under the covers as a child, for fear of unseen shapes in his bedroom ready to feast on any limbs that strayed out into the open.

 _Skrrcht_.

"We need to start walking," he whispered, "Don't run. Don't make any loud noises. Just calmly walk until you get to the top."

 _Skrrcht Skrrcht Skrrcht._

They both of them panicked, bolting headlong up the escalator.

 _Bang, clatter, thud, skrrcht._

He no longer held the railing, pulling himself up the steps ahead of him with his hands as he rushed forwards, scampering forward on all fours like a beast. He lost track of the number of times his knees bashed into the edges of the steps, or his fingers snagged a jagged metal tooth as he dragged himself upward. All that mattered was the escape.

He wasn't even aware that they'd made it to the top until he spilled out onto level ground. He scrabbled forward on his hands and knees for a moment, righting himself as quickly as he could before taking off at a run. Chie was some distance ahead of him, sprinting for a fire exit. For the blood pumping in his ears and the sound of his own feet beating the tiled floor, he couldn't hear whatever it was that had been following them up the escalator anymore. It could have given up, it could have been directly behind him. There wasn't enough money in the world to convince him to turn and check.

Up ahead, Chie had barged through the fire door, holding it open from the other side. He threw himself through the air as he neared the doorway, diving headlong into the darkness beyond. His companion had slammed the door and wedged a good amount of debris against it before he even got back to his feet. He winced as something in his neck pulled when he took a step forwards.

"Thank you," he said, aware of just how out of breath he was as a coughing fit started up. Chie seemed to ignore him, her attention entirely focused on the dimly lit stairwell they had entered. As he followed her gaze, he realised that she was fixated rather pointedly on somethind at the top, hovering just out of view behind black railings.

It moved awkwardly, balancing itself on twisted and slender legs. Its body was covered in dirty looking feathers the colour of rust and its long neck ended in an ornate brass cage that swayed back and forth along with its movements. From where he stood, he couldn't tell whether the creature was trying to shake the cage off or position it so that it could get a better view down the stairwell. From a hidden point near the monster, a loud scream sounded out and sent the beast quivering.

"Yukiko!" Chie yelled, propelling herself up the stairs before he could stop her. She was gone, taking the stairs three or more at a time, murder in her eyes, there was no way he was going to be able to catch her. Whatever that thing was up there, there was no way that she would be a match for it.

What happened next seemed to all flow together into a singularity of time. One instant with a thousand potential outcomes and a distressing amount of stimuli.

From above, the creature let out a pained cry as something heavy and fast struck it. Frail ribs splintered and a cloud of loose feathers descended like petals from an autumn tree. The screaming that had set Chie off died away, ending in a frightened gasp and a loud cry of protest from Chie.

He watched as a shape tumbled over the edge of the railings, falling towards him at the base of the stairs like a comet. Without thinking, he extended his arms, dropping to a knee as the red and black shape landed in his grasp. He grit his teeth as his leg broke through some piece of debris, an old television set, from the force of the landing. Shaking it off, he got back to his feet. In his arms, black hair cascaded away from a pale face, a girl unconscious and exhausted.

"Yukiko!" Chie called down from the top of the stairs.

"She's ok," he called up, hoisting the girl up as best he could. "She's ok."


	5. The Moon (Different Persons)

At the top of the stairs, they had found a heavy door to the upper levels of the shopping centre. The whole floor seemed to be a showroom of beds and cabinets, most of them collapsed and decaying in the gloom. It was an area blissfully avoid of any signs of life, for whatever value of "life" constituted the thing that had chased them or the twisted monstrosity that Chie had fought. While they had settled Yukiko down on a dust-caked old mattress and made to scout the area, she hadn't said a word nor even made eye contact with him. Whatever it is she had seen up there, it had clearly had a profound effect on her. He turned his eyes back to the unconscious girl. A profound effect on both of them.

He opened his mouth, but decided against asking anything. There was no answer Chie could give that would settle his nerves at this point.

"Look," she said quietly, motioning towards a recessed space between two sets of bunk beds. A metal door sat wedged into the wall, a long dead fire escape sign hanging off-kilter above it. If they could just get it open, it could mean getting out of there without worrying about backtracking into that... Thing from earlier.

Any thoughts about their escape were quickly sidelined with the sounds of panicked breathing and noises of alarm coming from their formerly unconscious companion. Rushing back they found her sat upright on the mattress, her fingers digging into the mouldy foam and her head darting from left to right, eyes wild and hair in a mess over her tear-stained face. Her gaze focused on Chie, and suddenly an air of calm fell over the girl, her shoulders drooping and her breathing slowing. In a second, Chie was at her friends' side, throwing her arms around the girl and holding her tight, whispering to her.

Twenty minutes later, the panicked air had left the room to be replaced by the familiar still atmosphere of quiet paranoia. Chie and Yukiko sat on the bed while he reclined against a cabinet and kept an ear out for trouble.

"It was awful," Yukiko whispered, wringing her hands. "That thing. It-"

"It's okay," Chie told her, "you're safe. We've just got to stick together."

Yukiko eyed him a little warily.

"Found him downstairs," Chie explained. "He caught you when you fell. Don't worry, he's good people."

"It was either catch you or watch you go headfirst into one of those TVs," he added with a shrug. "Not exactly a hard choice. Just glad you're okay now."

"What brought you here?" Yukiko asked him.

"Wish I knew." He pushed himself upright. "Just woke up in this place with no memory of anything. Honestly thought something would come back to me by now."

A hush fell on the room and he swore he could hear a creaking settling through the walls of the building, the entire centre settling into place like a giant in the depths of sleep. As safe as this place seemed, he reasoned, there was no chance he was going to just stay up here and wait for something to come and find them. He approached the metal door in the recess, gripping the handle and bracing his weight against it, hoping that there was no alarm on it.

With a scraping and juddering, the door slowly opened onto the outside world. Weak light began to stream into the room, filtering through thick grey clouds. The fog was still prevalent, wrapping itself around the nearby buildings and blocking out sight of all but the most immediate surroundings. A heavily rusted external fire escape gripped the side of Junes tightly, almost growing out of it like a tumour.

Pressing his foot down on the iron platform, he grimaced at the groaning and warbling noises that echoed up and down the stairway.

"It's complaining," he called back to the pair, "but I think if we're careful, it should take our weight."

He turned back just in time to see a dark shape dropping from above the door-frame, colliding sharply (and noisily) with the landing ahead of him. Reflexively he threw himself backwards, his back smashing against a cabinet and driving the air out him. The cabinet teetered and collapsed backwards, it's decayed wooden frame shattering the moment it hit the ground. Splinters rained about him as he sat up, eyes locking on the shape outside the door.

It too looked as though it were uneasily sitting up, planting its hands down on the rusted platform and shaking its head, rustling a thick shock of red hair.

"Yosuke!?" Chie's incredulous shout drew the attention of everyone in the room. The red-haired young man stopped in mid shake of his head, looking at the two girls with a mixture of bewilderment and relief.

"Wh-what the hell are you doing in there?" He asked, jabbing a finger towards the room.

"What the hell are you doing out there?" Chie echoed, "were you on the roof or something?"

Yosuke groaned as he got to his feet. Even from where they were sitting, they could all hear his knees pop as he stood up. "I took a wrong turn." He said. "I was checking out the staff areas, turns out I still had an old key for this place on my key-ring."

"Why were you looking around?" Yukiko was picking herself up from the mattress.

"I don't know if you've seen the streets lately, but they're crawling with all sorts of gross things. I was hoping I could get into the kitchenware supplies, at least get myself a knife or something."

"Did you find anything?" Yukiko asked.

"No, it was all cleared out. All I could find was this." He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a small grey radio, the antenna hanging loosely and swaying in his grasp. "Aw man," Yosuke looked at the dangling metal rod in despair. "It was working earlier. I must've sat on it when I-" For the first time, he locked eyes with the resident amnesiac, sitting up from a mound of broken wood and sawdust. Yosuke's eyebrow arched. "Uh, hey, you're-"

"Yeah, from earlier." He cut the redhead off.

"You two have met?" Chie asked.

"Yeah," he got to his feet and dusted off the worst of the cabinet's remains. "On my way into town. How do you guys know each other?"

"From school," Yukiko answered, approaching and picking a wooden shard from out of the shoulder of his jacket. "The three of us have known each other for years."

"Hey, uh," Yosuke interjected, "sorry for bailing earlier. This town is just really getting to me, you know?"

"Yeah, I know." He agreed. Between everything that had happened that morning, someone acting weird and running away wasn't exactly on the top of his worry pile. "Sometimes you've just got to get out of there."

"So, you still don't remember anything?" Yosuke called down from the top of the stairwell. Between him and the target of his question, Chie and Yukiko made their gradual way downwards.

"Nothing," he answered, trying not to call out too loudly. Ahead of him the fog was packed in thick, masking all but the few iron steps ahead of him at a time.

"Like, nothing-nothing?"

"Yosuke, leave it alone will you?" Chie sounded exasperated. "I don't think he wants to talk about it."

"But what do we call you?"

He gripped the railing tight as the step beneath him began to creak ominously. In a few seconds it passed and the four of them continued their descent.

"If you can't remember your name, we'll have to give you one."

"That's actually a good point," he admitted. "What did you have in mind?"

"Well, surely you should be the one to pick it. It's your name, after all." Chie pointed out.

"Yeah, and make it quick, I don't want to settle in to just saying 'Hey, you, come over here' and stuff like that."

A soft, repetitive noise rippled through the mist. Once again he gripped the railing tight, raising a hand to pause the group. Whatever it was, it sounded close. Light, muffled, almost sounding as though it were right behind him. With his free arm shaking, he slowly turned on the spot, spacing his feet so that he didn't take a tumble. His face contorted in confusion at what he saw.

"Yukiko? Are you laughing?"

She looked as though she were practically bursting from holding the giggles in. Her hand was pressed to her lips and her cheeks were turning a strange shade of purple. Finally she allowed herself to breathe, the stifled giggles becoming a torrent of belly laughs. Through the fog above, he could see Chie and Yosuke had stopped in their tracks and were staring down at her.

"Yukiko, are you okay?" Chie placed her hand on the other girl's shoulder.

Between eruptions of laughter and gulps of air, Yukiko managed to stammer out a few words.

"Wh-why not?" She steadied herself, trying to get the giggles under control. "I think that'd be a great name."

"What, 'You There'?" Yosuke looked around as though the key to the hidden joke was somewhere in the fog around him.

"Or just Yu for short." Yukiko's shuddering laughter finally subsided. All three of them looked at her in confusion while she composed herself. Chie patted her shoulder gently.

"Okay Yukiko, you got it all out?" Her friend nodded faintly, a sly smirk still tugging at the corners of her lips. Despite himself, he found that he had his own little grin forming too. He bowed his head ever so slightly, turning back to head down the stairs.

"Yu it is then. Or, rather, Yu I am then."

"Why do I get the feeling that we're starting up an old-timey comedy bit?" Yosuke muttered.

The streets of Inaba began to get tighter as they made their way towards the school. They had quietened down since leaving Junes, each of them keeping an eye on the myriad avenues that an attack could come from. They were all poised to shout out a warning the moment they saw something come lurching out of the mist. For the most part, though, spirits were high. There was definitely a sense of security in a group, even if they were unarmed and more than a little clueless about the situation in the town.

The three locals shared stories and memories of their time in Inaba, growing up together. Each recollection tinged with a slightly bitter haze, as though none of them were telling the whole story. Yu pushed the thought aside. As long as they were safe, that was all that mattered. And they certainly did seem safe. So why was it that he couldn't shift the sensation that something was going dreadfully wrong right before his eyes?

The first of the high-pitched whines went by almost completely undetected, swallowed up by the chatter between them. Then it rolled back in louder and more insistent, coupled with a distinct hissing noise. Yosuke frowned as he fished the broken radio from his pocket once again, holding it out at arm's length as the hissing static began to intensify.

"Why've you still got that?" Chie asked.

"Figured I might be able to fix it at some point, you never know." He brought the device up to his ear and shook it. "Looks like it's working now though."

"I don't think that sounds like a working radio," Yukiko said.

"Well, it's more than just dead. That's something at least." Yosuke started to twist the dial on the side of the radio, achieving nothing but filtering out the odd frequency of static crackle. The snow in the signal was getting louder, with a plethora of staccato barks and low hums mixing in with the noise.

"Can you switch it off?" Chie eyed the device suspiciously, "that noise is starting to creep me out."

"I'm not sure," Yosuke answered, agitation clear in his voice. "I thought this was supposed to be the switch for that, but nothing's-"

The harsh screech of rough metal being dragged along the road ripped through the fog. They froze. As one, they turned to look behind them at the expanse of mist-hidden road. To Yu and Yosuke, the noise was heart-droppingly familiar. The scraping noise came again and again in long, slow reverberations through the cool air. Every now and again it jumped a little, and a loose stone or rusted screw would skitter forwards and out of the fog. The four watched helplessly as it began to emerge out of the grey.

All slender sharp shapes that darted outwards and dragged itself forwards. Thin and impossibly angled limbs like a vast spider tirelessly advancing. A long and rusted blade was gripped in one hand, kicking up sparks and stone debris as it scored the ground. The head drooped as though hanging on a broken neck, the face obscured by a stark white mask that pressed tightly into the sides of the thing's head. Tight enough that a thin trace of blood could be seen staining the edges and running to its chin. One madly widened golden eye jostled violently in its socket, almost vibrating before finally coming to a rest and staring at the group.

As horrible as the creature was, it didn't draw the entirety of Yu's horrified fascination.

Silhouetted behind it, barely breaking through the fog was another figure. Smaller and less strikingly wrong in the way it moved, it almost seemed human. Straining his eyes, Yu saw a black jacket fluttering open and a white shirt wrapped tight to a slender frame. With all his instinct telling him to run, he turned his gaze upwards and looked the figure in the face. Its eyes met his and he felt lost in the cold. Such detachment, a pit of infinite and awful emptiness. Yu's mouth opened before he even realised it.

"Run!" He shouted.

All four of them turned and bolted, sprinting up the street in a blind panic. Everything devolved into chaos. At some point in the dash, Yu was vaguely aware of Yosuke calling out in a strangled cry "Get to the school!". Chie had her hand clamped tightly around Yukiko's wrist and practically dragged the girl ahead, taking the lead early on and disappearing into the fog together. Yu wasn't sure when Yosuke got swallowed up by the mist, but barely within a minute he was alone, his feet hammering into the street as he desperately fought to gain a lead on his pursuers. He fancied that he could hear the scraping of the monster's blade a few feet behind him. Doubling his efforts, the noises died away on the wind, leaving a single lingering note resting in his ears.

"You..."


	6. The Emperor (A Stray Child)

Yu's lungs burned.

He had been sprinting headlong down the street for what felt like a solid hour, his legs kept in order only through the sheer force of adrenaline coursing through his body. Any second now, he knew his knees would fold and everything would give way, sending him tumbling to the ground and making him an all too easy target for the threat chasing him. Ahead of him, a vast dark shape began to form out of the fog. Walls, metal gates, a tall building front. A school! He charged onwards, past the signpost for Inaba High School and on towards the shut gate. With a cry of exertion, he vaulted over it and hurled himself towards the main doors. With a single shove, they fell open and he collapsed inside. Lashing out with his feet, he shut them behind him with an echoing thud.

Yu lay there in the gloom and quiet for some time.

Even if he had wanted to stand up, he doubted that his abused limbs would pay the slightest bit of attention to him. He gladly lay on his back and let the rocking, throbbing waves of pain pulsate through his feet and legs to serve as his punishment for skipping on exercise all these years.

He let his eyes flutter open, half-lidded and staring up at the tiled ceiling. It was water damaged and cracked, a permanent cloud of vaporised plaster hanging in the air and catching the feeble light from the overhead lamps. His nostrils filled with the smell of damp collecting in the walls, mould and old rain water seeping into wood and cement.

In time, his pulse began to slow and the violent heartbeat in his ears gave way to the ambient hum of the electrical systems. His limbs hurt, but it was no longer the agony that it once was and, not counting a case of a very dry mouth, he felt strong enough to continue.

Getting to his feet, he looked about himself and saw corridors stretching almost endlessly to his left and right. Behind him were the doors to the outside world, and there was no force on earth that could make him want to open those at that exact moment. Ahead of him was a mural, a collection of promotions for extra-curricular clubs and sports teams that had long since rotted into illegibility. There were a few scattered photographs, but they were so faded and water-damaged that he couldn't make a single one out. He followed the corridor to the right, always taking time to look over his shoulder every now and again. The school hallways were a little more open than he was expecting, and he felt more than a little exposed wandering them alone.

At a volume that almost sent Yu scurrying for cover, speakers mounted high up on the walls began to chime, announcing the school's PA system opening up. He froze in place as dead air crackled quietly through the halls for five, ten, fifteen seconds. A quiet pop signified someone closing it off again and he was left alone in silence once more. He waited but nothing further came from the speakers, no messages or noises of any sort.

Wait, he thought, the PA system must be up near the principal's office. Whoever activated it must be around that area, perhaps Chie or Yukiko or Yosuke. He started into a jog down the corridor, keeping his eyes peeled for stairs or any sort of signposting. Door after door drifted past him as he made his way through the building, most of them shut but the occasional one giving glimpses of darkened classrooms with scattered chairs and dust-caked desks. He lost count of how many he had passed, the odd dread of an endless corridor settling into his mind. Just as the thought had made itself comfortable, a junction appeared, another corridor branching off to his left.

Yu saw the new corridor sharply end in a stair case, turning back on itself as it escalated into the upper floors of the school. A small signpost at its base pointed the way up to more classrooms, a faculty lounge and the principal's office. A vast, dirt-stained window stretched up along the far wall, letting in only the barest amount of light. Yu found himself idly wondering how long he could survive in this town without his eyes giving out under the strain. Then again, he told himself, if he lived long enough for that to happen, it wouldn't be the worst possible outcome.

A small noise broke him from his daydreaming, softly hissing from behind him. At first he thought it was the radio, coughing out static like it had before. It took several seconds for him to remember Yosuke sprinting off into the fog, the small device clasped in his hand. He turned slowly, the intensity of the electronic crackles increasing as he moved. Ahead of him, opposite the stairs was a doorway that he swore hadn't been there earlier, with poorly maintained wooden beams surrounding a panel of blackness. Within the room beyond he could see a single point of light, flickering in shades of grey in a tiny square suspended at chest height. It took a little while for his eyes to adjust and for him to realise that he was looking at a television screen, an old CRT sitting on a rusted metal trolley. It took him even longer to notice the mass of shapes moving about in the cramped confines of the room.

He couldn't get an accurate headcount of the things, the poor lighting and the constant motion put a quick stop to any of that. They jostled about close to one another, shambling silhouettes in the darkness, occasionally one of them wandering past the tv screen to be backlit and highlighted with terrible clarity.

They were humanoid in shape, barely. While they each had two arms, two legs, a body and a head, everything about their proportions seemed so monstrously wrong as to call the whole form into question. The limbs were too long, too thin and sharply angled and ended in slender hands tipped with crimson painted talon-like fingernails. Hips and chests were grotesquely bloated in some obscene mockery of feminine form, straining against faded and torn uniforms stained black and brown. Each of them had her head tilted forwards, long tangled hair covering her eyes but leaving the rest of the stark white face exposed. Small, impish noses coupled with vast lips painted a sort of red that Yu was confident could not be found in nature, glistening wetly and parting to reveal thin, cracked and yellow teeth that resembled bundles of needles clattering against one another. He could see murky streaks of dissolved makeup coating their cheeks when the hair tumbled away enough, mascara running in thick rivers over the bloodless skin.

He had already begun to back away towards the stairs when their voices started. Quietly at first, but picking up in volume as they called to and responded to one another. Their voices were distressingly childish, gurgling in their throats as the words formed.

"Don't look at me."

"Don't see me."

"Don't look at me."

"Please don't see me."

"This isn't me."

"I'm not that kind of girl."

He almost tripped backwards as his heel connected with the bottom step, only just managing to steady himself on the handrail. He kept his eyes locked on the room, watching it get further and further away while he climbed the stairs backwards, painfully slowly. The whispered voices died away, the crackle of the TV static faded and he was once more left in silence as he began the ascent up the second half of the stairs, glad to be taking them forwards this time.

He finally alighted on the next floor, greeted to plain white walls and a smoothly varnished floor. The windows here were still practically opaque, but in this case it seemed as though the cause was a thin a layer of white paint liberally applied to the inside of the glass. Streaks and grains were evident in the paint, pointing to someone being in a rush to complete their work. But why?

Out of the corner of his eye he spotted a sign hanging above the nearest door, the Principal's office a few metres away from him. He approached, pressing his hand down on the handle and shoving, but getting nowhere. The door was either locked or blocked from the other side, perhaps both. Either way, there didn't look to be an easy way to get in. Perhaps, he thought, he could get out of one of the windows and climb his way around the outside to-

A rythmic noise broke his train of thought. Steady clicking, the sound of feet on a well polished floor. He wheeled around, pressing himself back against the door to the office, his heart leaping as he saw the figure standing in the opposite doorway. A tall youth with broad shoulders and long, powerful looking limbs. His hair was bleached and styled into a severe looking widow's peak, coupling with a vicious scar on his left eyebrow and an aggressive scowl across his lips to paint a picture of intimidation. He said nothing, simply observing Yu and tapping his foot with seeming impatience.

"Are you the one that turned on that PA system?" Yu asked, trying to appear as calm as he could. He was fairly certain the stranger could hear his heart pounding from where he was though, or at least the quivering of his panicked breath.

In response, the youth only sighed, his scowl deepening. He thumped a fist against the doorframe he was resting against and Yu saw a variety of bruises and lacerations along his knuckles. Some were old battle wounds, some were clearly fresh and still bleeding.

"Was hoping you were." He muttered, straightening up.

"No, I just got here."

The scarred youth took a step forward, investigating him. Yu had just about managed to get his pulse back to normal and extended his hand.

"I'm Yu," he said.

"Kanji", came the reply, but no handshake. Kanji was instead looking past him at the door. "Take a step sideways Yu."

"What? Why?"

"'Cause I'm bored of waiting around for whoever set off that noise to either unlock the door or come back."

Kanji charged, not even waiting for Yu to get out of harm's way. With a duck and roll he watched the seeming delinquent shoulder-barge the door to the Principal's office. There was a thud and a crack that Yu desperately hoped had come from the timbers of the door and not Kanji's body. Any attempt to check on his well-being or to tell him to keep the noise down was quickly barreled out of the way as Kanji backed up and took a second attempt. With a shout he slammed into the door, ripping the whole thing off its hinges and stampeding through into the room beyond. Yu scrambled to his feet as quickly as he could, peering around the ruined doorframe.

"Kanji? Are you ok?"

The room beyond was practically bare. A simple desk with an old radio set up on it, a rusted old microphone lying on its side. A metal folding chair was propped up in the corner and, save for a lone Kanji steadying himself on the wall, rubbing a splinter-strewn shoulder, that was the entirety of the room's contents. No. Not the entirety. Yu squinted at the desk, at the radio and its coiled cables. Buried underneath the swirls of black plastic, he saw a dark rectangular shape. At first he had thought it was the radio's shadow, but as he approached he realised he was looking at a battered old VHS tape. A long-decrepit label clung to one edge, bearing a number of titles hastily inked over one another.

"[illegible] Truth"

"Reach"

"[illegible] 2"

"Fate of [illegible]"

He picked it up, blowing a film of dust from it. At the groan to his left, he turned his eyes to Kanji.

"You ok?"

The youth rolled his shoulders, eliciting a loud cracking noise.

"Oh yeah," he muttered, "just pissed that took two attempts. I'm losing my edge."

Yu chuckled, "Hopefully not. I think that edge of yours is going to come in handy."

He turned the tape over in his hands and looked through the ruined door, out to the hallway and to the stairs beyond.


	7. The Lovers (I Want Love)

Yu felt only the most minimal shame in letting Kanji take the lead in the journey back down the stairs. His companion had doubled back right before descending, leading Yu to worry that he was going to run off and leave him, but he had returned rather quickly with the office's folding chair resting in the crook of his arm. Yu raised his eyebrow, but Kanji only gave a confident smirk in response as he stepped past.

They made their way down the stairs, turning the corner on the approach to the ground floor and its room of humanoid nightmares. At some point the door had swung closed and blocked off sight to the television and the shambling creatures that surrounded it.

"So what exactly was it you saw that freaked you out?" Kanji asked, gently testing his swing with the chair.

"I don't know what they were, and to be honest I don't want to know." Yu admitted. "Every time I think I can't get creeped out further, this damn town finds a way to lower the bar."

"Yeah, I hear that."

"You've seen them too?"

"I've seen," Kanji hesitated, looking for the right word, "I've seen things."

"What happened?"

"I dealt with it." Kanji stretched his free arm, fist clenched. His bruised and lacerated knuckles cracked, the noise echoing down the stairwell.

"But what-"

"I dealt with it." Kanji snapped, shooting a furious look over his shoulder. Yu thought better of pushing the subject, and simply nodded quietly. Silence was probably the best option anyway, he reasoned, stepping off the stairs. The air was still, but still humming with the faint noise of wires in the walls, making him strain to hear anything beyond the closed door. He couldn't hear the voices or the static, but he knew that didn't mean those things weren't waiting for both of them on the other side. With the briefest of glances passing between them, Yu nodded to Kanji who proceeded to raise his leg and kick forward ferociously at the door.

The timbers shattered and Yu braced himself for what was to come.

It was, in fact, nothing.

No television. No shambling creatures. Nothing.

The room itself seemed smaller than before, filth-strewn walls pressed in tightly and a low ceiling pressing down barely a foot above their heads. In the centre of the flaking overhead surface, a thin opening yawned, occasional drips of rust-coloured liquid falling from it to the floor below. It wasn't the same room. Couldn't have been.

"It's weird," Kanji told him, stepping inside and taking a closer look, "but it's nothing to freak out over. There's creepier stuff out there."

"This isn't-"

Yu was cut off by a sound echoing down from the fissure in the ceiling. It was distorted, warbling and metallic, as though it were being fed down a series of poorly maintained metal pipes. There was no mistaking it though, it was a human scream.

Yu rushed into the room, getting as close as he dared to the hole and looked upwards, straining his eyes at the darkness. A decayed iron ladder stretched up and, some incalculable distance away, he could see a pinprick of light in the black. Somewhere in that distant place, someone was screaming, whimpering. He couldn't tell through the distortion whether it was one of his companions, the echoes and warbling meant that it could have been anyone. Another drop of the rancid liquid fell, spattering against his cheek but he barely noticed.

"Give me a boost." He said.

"Are you serious?"

"Boost." He repeated.

Kanji got in close and knelt down with his hands clasped, lifting and steadying Yu enough for him to get a grip on the ladder and start to pull himself up into the hole.

"Right behind you," Kanji told him, but already his voice sounded muffled and distant.

Yu dragged himself up through the vertical tunnel, hand over hand in the darkness. The walls about him pressed in tight, threatening to trap him in place every few rungs of the ladder before gradually widening out just enough to let him pass. The liquid ran down the walls and soaked through his jacket, forming an oily film between his clothing and skin. The smell filled his nostrils and seemed to catch in his throat, a solid lump of flavours that he couldn't shake. He grit his teeth and continued the climb, the screams from above having died off and been replaced by his hands and feet pounding the metal rungs, Kanji a few feet behind him.

Other noises echoed through the tunnel, muffled behind the walls. Sharp footsteps cracking on a hard surface, or flash bulbs bursting every few seconds. Chattering voices gurgled from somewhere unseen, getting louder and louder but all talking over one another.

Cheers.

Groans.

Grunts.

Finally he pulled himself up into the light, up into the air. Dropping to the side he lay on his back, grimacing as the oil flowed from him and trickled past his face in a tiny stream that sped towards the hole. A humming light strip above him cast shadows across the room, though from where he was lying he could barely make them out. Exhausted, he began to sit up, just as another scream started.

Across from him, a young woman was pressed against the wall that was just as filthy as those in the room he had climbed up from. Her face was drawn into a shriek, her throat only managing to make a quiet raspy noise as her eyes focused on something behind Yu's head. He turned, recoiling as he caught sight of the creature.

It was humanoid in shape, thin and tall, but was bent over backwards so far that each of its joints appeared to be facing in the wrong direction. Its head swung back on a long, loose neck that seemed to be broken, long and lank hair matted to its face with dirt. His eyes ached to look at the thing, colour running across its surface like oil over a puddle, rings of pinks and yellows and blues and greens spreading out, blossoming and fading as his eyes fought to take them all in.

The creature let out a long, deep sigh that ricocheted through a ruined throat. Its hands extended long, slender fingers, clutching at the air as it started to move. Mutterings of a husky and feminine voice started to bubble up from behind the mask of hair strands and filth. It too was uninterested in Yu, reaching out for the girl at the far side of the room, shambling forwards in her direction.

"Stop!" Yu cried out, stretching his arms out to the side and placing himself in the way as much as he could. Truth be told, he wasn't sure what his plan was. He clenched his fists as the monster rushed him.

There was a rush of air as something passed overhead, connecting sharply with the creatures body. A dull thud bounced across the walls as the folding chair was smashed against the monster again and again, furiously pounding on its lithe form. Kanji strode forwards, roaring in defiance as he reared back and swung out again, catching the thing across its shoulder and eliciting a loud snapping sound. Any sense of accomplishment was short-lived, however, as the creature span on the spot and caught Kanji under the chin with one of her grasping hands. The youth was sent sailing back through the air, landing in a heap on the ground and almost tumbing back down the hole.

The fiend turned its attention to Yu, finally deciding that he was worthy of notice. It pulled itself up to stand at its full height, scraping itself against the ceiling as it did so. Its fragile looking body slumped forwards, its limbs finally settling into place and its head and neck drooping forwards rather than back. Its mouth began to open and Yu could only watch in horror as hundreds of thin, gleaming needles came into view, slick with dark saliva.

A wave of fetid air drifted from the monsters throat, a hot wind of foul breath that enveloped Yu's head. He felt nauseous, dizzy. He was barely aware when the breathing stopped, a sickening crunching noise sounding in his ears. He turned his gaze to the left, just catching sight of the girl letting go of Kanji's folding chair and leaving it embedded in the creatures skull. They both fell back, landing out of sight as Yu fell to his knees, the strength leaving him.

He found himself crawling forwards, towards the glinting light of the television set. Had that always been there? It shone out a beacon of static into the room, thrumming with electricity as Yu crawled closer and closer. The video cassette was in his hand, pushed forwards, sinking into the VCR with a low clicking noise. He held himself up and stared at the screen as the tape began to play.

White tiles.

Crackling lines of interference.

An old storefront, its window smashed open. A body lay amidst the broken glass, skin shredded and caked with blood. Red hair fell against Yosuke's face, riddled with deep, dark gashes.

A gurney lying on its back, wheels idly spinning.

Two bodies, lashed together with slender cable, hanging from a streetlamp. Chie was frozen mid-scream, Yukiko's long black hair catching the breeze behind her.

A curtain drawn around a hospital bed, machines reading fading life signs.

A house. One that he didn't recognise but that still felt vaguely familiar. A large vehicle, a truck, pulling up outside it and blocking the camera's view.

The camera lingered there for a while, picking up ambient noises distorted by severe neglect on the tape. Only a single doorbell chime could be heard clearly, before the film finally came to a stop.

Silently, Yu collapsed to the floor.

When he finally woke up, it was to the sound of a quiet conversation. Kanji's voice and a warm, feminine tone. Both nearby but inaudible. They clearly didn't want to wake him. Yu wondered just how long he could lie there in murky half-sleep, allow himself to finally feel some amount of rest.

He could feel an ache in his shoulder, compelling him to slowly roll over with a groan.

"Hey, you're awake." Kanji said, rushing over to him and extending his hand. Yu opened his eyes, finding himself in the same room he had been in when he had fainted. It was decidedly bare, though. No folding chair, no television set, no slender monstrous corpse. He finally, almost reluctantly took Kanji's hand and allowed himself to be helped up. Almost immediately his joints began to complain and he longed to go back into the embrace of his unconscious state.

"What happened?" He asked, his throat dry and tight.

"I'm not fully sure," the girl answered, sounding in a far more coherent state than she had been previously. "Whatever it was though, I think we're safe now."

"Like, relatively at least." Kanji added.

Yu smiled. The qualifier made all the difference.

"Do you hear that?" Kanji put his hand out, eyes upturned. At first Yu could hear only the vague hum in the walls, but within a few seconds another noise joined it. Increasing in volume moment on moment, until it eventually became an ocean of noise within the confines of the room, echoing through each of their skulls.

There was no mistaking the sound of an air raid siren.


	8. The Star (Black Fairy)

The noise reverberated through the building, forcing its way painfully through their ears and down their jaws, leaving a jarring sensation of motion-sickness. Moment on moment it picked up in volume, making the walls judder with the force of it all. Each of them turned to the other, confusion clearly etched into their faces and giving way to a rising panic until their features began to dim. In fact, everything began to dim. With the rising volume came a sharp drop in the lighting conditions, the power to the lamps overhead fading away. The dying light bled downwards, almost like it was pooling around their feet and draining down into the hole at the centre. Warmth flowing fast down into the endlessly black drain below. Despite his better judgement, Yu found himself looking over the edge and down into the darkness.

Somewhere at the back of his skull, a randomly firing neuron made a joke about a Nietzsche quote.

As the light lowered and his eyes became accustomed to the gloom, he focussed and saw nothing.

He fixed his eyes on nothing.

He watched nothing intently until, to his horror, he saw it smile.

Yu almost collided with the other two as he threw himself backwards, his legs kicking out reflexively to propel himself as far from the hole as possible.

"What is it?" Kanji asked him.

Yu had no time to respond before the noises began. Even over the sound of the air raid siren there was no missing the vast, echoing beats of something immense beating the walls of the vertical tunnel below. Enormous metal blades puncturing the pipes and cables that snaked their way downward. Shifting, hissing noises as something impossibly huge began to drag its bloated form up towards them.

There were no more words.

All three of them ran straight for the door, hurling themselves out of the room as quickly as they could. They spilled out into the corridor, barely registering the hellish vision of the light flickering away and viscous blackness coating the ceiling and walls, dripping ever downwards. Their heavy footfalls seemed distorted as they echoed down the corridor, muffled and distant as though the sounds were passing through water. Before long, a light patter of liquid began to fall, misting about them.

"Is it... Is it raining in here?" The girl said, her voice strained.

"Just keep running," Yu called back. Where they were running to, though, he had no idea. He could now barely see a few feet ahead of him at a time and at least once he found himself nearly running headlong into a wall. Only a last minute scrabble to regain his footing stopped his collision, and even then a heavy thud behind him signalled that Kanji had less luck working with his momentum. If he had suffered an injury from the crash, he didn't show any sign, rapidly bringing his speed back up to keep pace with the other two.

By now the ceiling, walls and floor were all drenched in a moist blackness, running in thick rivulets to amass in the cracks and corners. They passed by open classroom doors, little glimpses of ruined furniture and decaying walls with vaguely humanoid shapes stirring in the darkness.

"Just keep running!" Yu called back to them, "There's got to be a-"

He collided heavily with a set of double doors, the air knocked out of him as they burst open and he fell forwards into empty air. It rushed by his ears for an instant as he tumbled, landing in a heap on something soft and cool. Two soft noises either side of his head signalled the undignified arrivals of his two companions. With a groan, he pulled himself up into a seating position and looked about himself.

The darkness stretched off endlessly, a bleak void in every direction. They were sat on top of a mound of soft, shredded fabric - Pieces of old school uniforms and torn sheets all riddled with mold. While the surroundings were less than ideal, Yu at least noted with a certain amount of appreciation that the noise of the siren had finally died away.

"You ok, Kanji?" He asked, looking over his shoulder. The young man grunted in acknowledgement, rubbing his neck with a grim look plastered across his features.

"How about..." he trailed off, looking over his other shoulder. The girl was pulling a loose strand of something from her hair.

"Rise," she said, "and I'm fine, thank you. But where in the world are we now?"

It was a good enough question, he had to admit. Nothing about the layout of this place made sense. Ever since he'd left that upstairs office with Kanji, the entire building had begun to twist about itself in an effort to frustrate him. Now with the thick darkness settling in like the fog that was no doubt still billowing outside, any attempt to find their way out was doubly doomed. He squinted into the shadows but there was no clue as to which direction, if any, would lead to a potential exit.

"And what the hell was that back there?" Kanji said, pulling himself up to his feet and helping Rise to hers.

"Nothing." Yu answered numbly.

"Nothing?"

"Just... Let's not talk about it." He said, shaking his head gently. These next few minutes would require a clear head and he couldn't risk getting himself distracted by thoughts of that yawning chasm at the base of the tunnel.

The glinting claws.

The amber eyes that had looked right through him.

The empty maw that had split open into a smile as he stared into it.

He felt a shudder pass down his spine and a pang of shame went with it. He had to get them all out of here, and he had to do it soon. Cowering away wouldn't solve anything. He struggled to his feet, feeling the steady sensation of Kanji's palms on his shoulders, helping to support him. He thanked the youth and patted himself down, a small blizzard of spores and fabric scraps falling from him.

"Either of you two have an idea which direction we should head in?" He asked.

"If every way looks the same," Kanji said, scratching the side of his head, "then we don't lose anything by just heading straight forwards. Right?"

"He's got a point," Rise agreed. "I think as long as we keep moving, we should be ok."

Yu didn't think he could fault the logic. They were in a hopeless position, the only thing for it was to keep going and keep their wits about them. After a little momentary scrabbling, they managed to get themselves down from the heap of rotten fabric and onto the floor of whatever room it was they were in. It seemed to be made from bare wooden boards, creaking under foot and echoing with the patter of the dark rainfall overhead. The three of them set out, walking forwards into the darkness.

It was quiet. Almost enjoyably so. No ominous thuds or scraping sounds came to greet them from the shadows. After a while even the rainfall of the creaking floorboards had become just ambient noise, Yu tuning them out and not even noticing. Within minutes, though, even that quiet calm had been tainted by doubt. This whole area was so noiseless, so lonely, so empty that he could truly believe that it stretched out into infinity. Looking back behind him, he noticed that the mound they had landed on had already been swallowed up into the void, completely out of sight by now.

"This isn't right," he said, his voice seeming to get devoured by the thick air around them, refusing to echo. "Maybe we should turn back-"

The wooden floor began to groan, straining as timbers began to buckle and bend beneath their feet. In more than one place the boards shattered, sending clouds of splinters up into the air to rain back down to earth as dark needles. Yu stumbled as the movement knocked him off balance, only able to stop himself from tumbling over by grabbing an exposed chunk of rent wood. He grimaced as shards drove into his palm, but he was far too preoccupied with the sight below. The impossibly deep pit that sat below them all, waiting for them. He recoiled, taking a few uneasy strides backwards and almost knocking straight into Rise and Kanji.

They in turn were busy staring out past Yu, eyes fixed on the direction that they had all been traveling in. Turning to follow their gaze, Yu watched in horror as the nothingness from before began to drag its way through the shadows. Little flecks of substance came into view, as though rushing by a window in a hurricane, a scrap of red fabric, a patch of fur. The only constant were those unblinking, uncaring golden eyes sitting atop the void. They fixed themselves on the trio as the maelstrom approached like a vast black glacier.

The floor gave way all around it, the ground warping and surging while they fought to keep their stability. Yu took a step backwards and felt the timbers give way, rotting and collapsing into the chasm below. With a panicked glance, he realised that their available space had been shrinking away without them even realising it. Now they were caught with the monstrous vortex dragging itself ahead of them and an endless abyss falling away behind. By the time he looked back, the beast had managed to pull itself close enough that he could smell what almost seemed like rank breath emanating from the swirling chaos within its fractured body.

The abomination shuddered, a deep gurgling noise bubbling up from somewhere inside it as it lifted one enormous column of a limb. Its reach was so immense that the cruel claws its tip were almost lost in the enshrouding darkness above. All too soon they came back into view, though, as the arm came down in a vicious arc. The air seemed to distort around it for a moment before the collosal paw crashed down into the floor, stopped only momentarily by Kanji's body. If he made any sound, it was lost almost instantly in the screech of supports giving way and old wood rupturing. Yu and Rise watched in disgust as the arm raised itself again from the crater in the floor it had made, a few dark red stains and tatters of black fabric clinging to the claws were all that remained of Kanji.

Before either of them could react, the monsters other arm darted out impossibly fast and closed a giant fist around Rise. Yu watched helpless as she was dragged, screaming from the ground and hoisted up into the air high above what counted for the thing's face. In an agonizing instant it had let go, letting Rise float down through empty space for a brief moment before she disappeared into the roiling chaos deep inside its core. Her screams were cut mercifully short as she vanished from sight, the enormous monstrosity finally turning its attention back to Yu. A rising gale was filling the space, seeming to emanate from the vile creature ahead of him.

Yu wasn't sure whether it was a conscious decision that he was making, or whether the efforts and stress of the recent events had finally taken their toll on his body. In a still functioning corner of his mind, he fancied that it was his own decision in an attempt to spite the creature, rather than simply the fact that all the strength and will had bled from his body. Whatever the reason, the result was the same and he was only vaguely aware of his knees buckling underneath him. The monster vanished as he tilted backwards, looking up at the inky sky and watching it rush away from him as he collapsed backwards.

Soon the rushing wind from the nightmare figure was gone, drowned out by the air rushing past his ears as he fell into the abyss. As he closed his eyes and let the darkness take him, even that too died away.

Soon all that was left was a blessed quiet.


	9. The Sun (The Day of Night)

In the murk and static of an oncoming headache, Yu sat slumped in a well-cushioned chair. He weakly gripped the wooden armrests and took in a long breath, the scent of roasting coffee grounds and faint cigarette smoke flowing into him. He opened his eyes gradually, wincing at the light overhead. It wasn't particularly intense, but his eyes had gotten very well acquainted to gloom recently. The orange glow felt like a flare streaking across his eyeballs.

Muffled through walls and distance, the buzz of cicadas and the call of Jungle Crows rolled over him, soothed him. Yu groaned as he sat himself upright, neck aching as everything fell into place. A small living room, cluttered with boxes of take-out and empty cans. Dishes were scattered over the available surfaces with varying levels of dirt encrusting them.

It had fallen into such disrepair.

This home away from home.

This...

What?

No.

Had he been here before?

All of this detritus and grime, the delicate balance of this little haven upset by filth.

It would break her heart to see this.

Her?

Who?

Yu clutched his head, his skull straining and his eyes burning. He bit back a scream as he cradled his head in his hands. It felt as though a thousand memories were all clogged into the narrow thoroughfares of his mind, the congestion threatening to rip his brain apart. Through the din, he heard the sound of a long and slow intake of breath. the slightest crackle of burning paper as smoke was sucked down into lungs. He looked up to see a figure in the shadows, outline of his worn features etched out by the light of a lit cigarette between his lips. From within the darkness, Yu could feel a pair of dark, tired eyes peering right into him and judging everything.

Another long drag on the cigarette, and the figure spoke, his voice cracking under strain and tears and fatigue.

"How could you let him take her?"

Yu awoke choking.

Clouds of dust erupted from his lips as he sat up, lingering in the air and catching the cold light from overhead. His head still felt like it was about to split, but as everything came rushing back to him, he realised it could have been far worse.

He was seated in a pile of old timbers and flaking ceiling tiles, a yawning hole above leading to the next floor up. Had he fallen from there? It had seemed like such a long drop, not the single storey that it now appeared.

He stood up, slow and cautious, bracing himself against the wall as he reached his aching feet. It was so quiet here that he could hear the blood pounding in his ears and the creaking of the beams across the floor. No noises of vast monstrosities. Nothing giving chase. No companions. He was alone.

Even so, he crept down the corridor as quietly as he could, running his hand along the cold wall for support and guidance. Making his way towards the junction at the end, the murky window letting in a faint light from outside. He pressed his palms down on the sill, resting his forehead against the glass and staring outside.

The fog still rolled across the town, blocking off sight to anything too far away. The black gates of the school were just visible as peaks through the grey sea, and the edges of far-off buildings cast dense shadows at irregular intervals. What drew his attention, though, was the gathering of figures at the front of the school. Five of them, milling about in the courtyard, slowly making their way towards the gates.

Yosuke, Yukiko, Chie, Kanji and Rise.

There was a break in the clouds, and a momentary beam of warm sunshine washed down across the group. Yu was stunned for a second, looking confused at the golden shine. Had it been so long that the idea of sunlight now seemed so alien to him? Just as quickly, it faded away and the clouds closed up.

He could see them smiling from here. No sound made it up to him, but he could see them talking and laughing as they made their way from the building into the outside world.

How had they gotten out? How had they found each other?

Yu slapped his hands against the glass, making a dull thud, the pane juddering in its frame. Not one of them looked up. He beat again, harder. There was no response. He was too exhausted to raise his arm again, and could only watch impotently as the five of them reached the gate and opened it, wandering out into the fog and out of his sight.

He slowly sank to his knees, pressed up against the wall. He was too tired to get up. Too tired to make a noise. He fell into sleep, but it was impossible to tell for how long. When he woke up, the headache had subsided and he was still slumped in the same position. The same weak light filtered in from outside. He turned his head to the left, the corridor ahead was littered with fallen lockers, shattered beams and pipes collapsed from the ceiling and walls. There was no way through there. He turned right and saw the opposing corridor end abruptly in a thick metal door criss-crossed with chains and padlocks.

Yu sighed, picking himself up.

There was a way out of here. Now he knew it for certain. He just had to find it.

He backtracked up the hallway, towards the mound of debris that he had first woken up in. Perhaps he could find a way to climb up to the next level and go from there.

He paused, frowning, halfway towards his goal. A strange sensation played across his skin, air dancing across his hand and lifting the hairs. A chill. A draft.

He turned to the wall, lined with photo portraits of one of the classes here. Most were faded and illegible, but one or two remained to stare eerily out at him, frozen in time. A small tear ran down the far left of the wall, separating out one individual face from the others. A sad looking slender girl, light wavy hair and soulful, downturned brown eyes. Yu turned his eyes to the name underneath.

Konishi.

The draft that had drawn his attention was coming from the slit in the paper alongside the girls photo. Gently he extended his hand and pressed it to the gap. The paper was old and badly battered, the slightest pressure from his fingers tore it apart and his hand slipped into the void beyond. The paper tore almost completely and the girls photo drooped over, hanging sadly by a thin shred, softly swaying in the faint breeze.

Yu's hand closed over a handle and he pulled as hard as he could, the metal fire door swinging open and shredding the remainder of the photo wall.

Ahead of him, a thin metal staircase climbed up into weak grey light, clouds gently drifting overhead. The roof?

He stepped forwards, a loud clank as the bottom of his shoe pressed down on the first step. He clutched the rusted rail at the wall, pulling himself upwards and letting the air wash over him.

Within moments he had managed to make his way up to the rooftop. The open sky above him, cloud-strewn though it was, felt like paradise compared to being contained within the school. The wire fencing around the perimeter still gave him enough of a view outside to make a nice change from the decayed walls of the building's interior. He sucked in a lungful of mostly fresh air, erupting into another coughing fit as the chill reached his lungs.

Yu fell to the floor, looking upwards at the clouds and letting the coughs subside. He wasn't sure how long he spent up there, revelling in the simple joy of being outside. It was getting dark by the time he got back up to his feet, or at least darker than it usually was. He walked to the edge of the roof that corresponded with the front of the school, gripping the mesh of the fence and gazing out into the town.

From up here the roofs formed dark islands in the murky grey sea, intermittently breaking up the gloom like rocks. Inaba wasn't a big town by any means, but by now his five companions could truly be anywhere.

They could be-

He froze. He remembered Kanji and Rise falling to that... Thing back inside.

He remembered the video tape and how the others had been lying broken and lifeless.

The white tiles, the gurney, the hospital bed.

He looked out over the town, to the outline of a tall structure looming out of the fog. White and seemingly untouched by the decay. With nothing else to go on, the hospital appeared to be his only choice.


	10. The Hanged Man (White Noiz)

Yu gripped the drain-pipe as tight as he could manage, his body pressed up against the side of the building as he made his painfully slow descent to ground level. Every few inches of clambering down the building made him want to look down and check on his progress, quickly meeting a harsh mental chastisement. Just keep climbing, he told himself, hand over hand, down you go, keep going until your feet reach the bottom.

Or until they reach something waiting for you at the bottom.

As intrusive thoughts went, it wasn't an entirely unfounded one. With a few seconds to collect himself and work up the courage, he turned his gaze away from the pipe and brickwork directly ahead of him, dropping his head.

Thick grey fog sat below him, drifting ever so slightly in an unfelt breeze. In the faint gaps that formed he could spot dark tufts of grass maybe six or seven feet below. He sighed with relief, only then realising just how much his hands had started to ache, thumbs cramped painfully and wrists trembling.

He slid down the remainder of the way as best he could, his left hand slipping free when he was close to the bottom and threatening to turn his dismount into a clumsy collapse. He managed to balance himself in the end and suffered only a few grazes to his knuckles, and perhaps a blow or two to his pride. Yu knelt there for a moment, hand pressed to the grass and basking in the moment of having sky over his head and a somewhat open road under his feet. Then came the memories of what exactly had chased them into the school in the first place.

He turned, planting his back against the brick wall and scanning his surroundings. A few feet ahead, the interior of the railings surrounding the school separated him from the rest of the outside world. He turned his head to the right, following the row of black bars piercing the fog, to the school's entrance in the near distance. To his relief, and that of his rapidly thudding heart, there was nothing there besides a few billowing wisps of mist.

He rested a while, rubbing the feeling back into his tortured hands, before getting back up to his feet. Just because that thing wasn't there now, he surmised, didn't mean that it was necessarily far away. Yu suppressed a shudder as he stepped outside of the school gates and onto the road ahead, never once taking a look back.

Walking the streets of Inaba alone again made the streets seem that much more barren, lifeless. Perhaps the route to the school had just been a more vibrant part of town, or more likely the company had distracted Yu from the endless tide of fog and rotted store fronts and homes. Here and now there were no such distractions, and the route to the hospital was free to plague him with its rolling scenery of grey and black, fog clinging to the fromework of the buildings in an almost obscene manner.

More than once along the journey he found himself stopping to peer at the darkened windows that peppered the buildings like an outbreak of sores. Something about the way the buildings sagged on their foundations, or had been built up over humps in the road, made it so that no two consecutive windows were ever level with each other. The more he glimpsed at them, the more frustrating they became, rising and falling in the surrounding wood and stone faces.

Perhaps it was the inconsistency, and his mind working overtime in an attempt to find a pattern in it all that made the figures visible.

They were indistinct at first, dark blurs against dark blurs while a headache started to birth itself in the front of his skull. As the road continued onwards, each of them began to become clearer, standing at the windows and gazing out onto the street below. Defined human figures standing and watching him, completely still behind the panes.

He tried his best to ignore them as distinct faces began to form behind the filthy glass, some of them pressed tightly against the surfaces and peering out. Mouths opened and closed, eyes glared out.

Yu continued on the path, trying to keep his eyes straight ahead and not straying to the windows. As the pain in his skull grew, it mutated itself into noise. Harsh and scratching, warbling, fluctuating, building in volume as he approached an intersection. It looked as though, in another life, it had maybe served as one of Inaba's busier crossings with its wide roads and plethora of street lights though they were all dead now. To his right as he approached, a tall pole stood with a bus timetable hanging from it, half illegible from rust. At its base, Yu saw a small black shape, leaning against the metal pole as though left there very deliberately.

Bending down, he gingerly picked up the small black box, the very same one that he had last seen in Yosuke's grasp as the young man had sprinted off into the fog. He realised that the horrific noises he had been hearing weren't originating from his imagination. The grinding and groaning and gurgling was all a part of the static bubbling up from the radio's speaker, washing over him as he lifted the device to eye level and stood staring at it.

Moments passed.

The sounds died away.

Yu stood in the silence, hand wrapped tightly around the radio. A part of him wanted it to burst into life again and stream migraine-inducing white noise into the air, or at least something to provide a noise in what was beginning to feel like an increasingly empty town. He looked up and realised that even the faces peering at him from the surrounding buildings had vanished, leaving behind glass flecked with monochrome smears. He was alone again.

He turned the radio over in his hands, not sure entirely what it was he was looking for. It certainly did appear to be the very same radio that he had originally found, the one he had given to Yosuke. He frowned as he spotted a small off-white patch at the back of the device, poking out of the compartment for its batteries, a tattered edge of old paper. He pulled on it, unfurling a note that had been tucked into the radio as though it were a little lockbox for a keepsake. The paper curled itself up, rolled into a ring like a fortune cookie insert. Yu pressed down one end against the radio and unfurled it, eyes scanning across the hastily inked words.

On our own two feet we saw the world. Take them from us and hang them up high, so that we can see the truth.

He turned the paper over.

Look. At. Us.

The knot that had been building in Yu's stomach had gotten so tight he felt it could become a diamond at any second, his fingertips pressing tightly into the radio and note.

When the noise started, he was almost expecting it.

A soft, slow creak of metal.

The rustling of fabric.

That same creaking ebbing away. Coming back.

Light bulbs blinking into life with pops and stutters.

The lamp posts behind him began to illuminate the road, casting shadows in all directions.

In the shadows, Yu saw them.

Hanging upside down, suspended by their feet. They swung in an otherwise unfelt breeze, creaking and rustling as they dangled overhead.

Yu straightened himself up and let the note fall to the floor, landing and sinking into a small puddle of oily black ichor. He clenched his teeth, placing the radio firmly into his pocket and ignoring the urge to run. He calmly turned to his left, towards the road to the hospital, at least as far as he could tell.

He started walking and didn't take a single look back, keeping his eyes fixed ahead until the sounds and silhouettes were nothing but memories.


	11. Wheel of Fortune(Darkness that lurks)

Yu considered a number of concepts when it came to a hospital. A place of healing, of peace, of soothing away physical and mental anguish. Everything that he tried to link to the building was dispelled in the instant that he saw it. Rising up out of the earth like a squat, dead tree and dominating the landscape, commanding all attention.

A pair of ambulances sat beside the main entrance, sitting on long deflated tires and covered in grime and dust. Yu fancied that he could see someone sitting immobile behind the steering wheel of the farthest vehicle, but he worked hard to convince himself it was just a coat slung over the back of the driver's seat. Even so, his eye lingered on it for a moment before he approached the hospital entrance.

The double doors opened with a slight crunching sound, as what could have been years of disrepair and detritus gave way in an instant. A little grey dust fell onto his jacket sleeve, the tattered remains of a cobweb clinging feebly to his fingers before he patted them both away. The interior of the building was dark, as he had come to expect, the dim light of the outside world allowing him to see a reception area with faded chairs set up and a counter. No-one was present, waiting, and Yu rationalised that at this point it would probably be far more alarming to actually see another person.

He stepped inside and allowed himself the luxury of a minute or two in the gloom, letting his eyes get accustomed to the light level. A few brochures and magazines were scatted haphazardly across the reception floor, giving his footsteps a slick clicking noise as he made his way forwards, echoing across the walls and making the place feel truly empty. Even having gone so long without care, the building still stank of antibacterial gels and cheap air-fresheners, giving the whole area a heady and sterile scent.

Yu walked past the reception, drawn to the wall that lead onwards into the rest of the facility, and at the map that took up most of its surface. The pieces that he could make out were labelled up as he would have expected, with the wards taking up most of the building through the doors ahead, stretching up for three floors. It was a lot of information to take in, especially considering he wasn't entirely sure what it was that he was looking for. Each room named clinically, 3-1, 3-2, 3-3... He stopped, frowning at the top floor map. An unlabelled room sat between 3-3 and 3-4, taking up the same amount of space as its surrounding areas, but with no marking. A slight smudging of black ink indicated that someone had scrawled on the map with some sort of marker, but it had long been smeared into oblivion.

Yu considered it for a moment. Could be a supply room? But those were labelled on the other floors, and took up a smaller space. In fact, everything was named and labelled, except for that one that he mentally referred to as 3-3.5. He made a note of the stairs he would need to take to get there, the corridor junctions, the turnings. Two lefts, two rights, fourth room on the right.

He stepped through the door ahead, releasing another dust shower as he emerged into the main hospital building.

If anything, the interior of the facility was even less welcoming than its outward appearance. Long corridors stretching off into darkness, flanked by featureless door after featureless door. All noise seemed to die off save for a faint whistle of wind rushing through something far away. It was as barren as any building he could think to be in.

And yet, as he made his way down the left hallway, past the doors and murky windows, he couldn't shake the feeling that he was being watched every step of the way. Every now and again he would sense eyes peering out at him from inside a room, maybe from the other side of one of the pristinely-made beds. Every time he turned to look, he was met with nothing. A few times he felt as though he could see a slight blur of movement, as though he had beaten a mystery voyeur, but no matter how long he stood and waited, nothing ever came back into view. He convinced himself that his eyes were playing tricks on him.

He made it to the stairs eventually, finding himself oddly grateful to be somewhere that was a little more closed in. He travelled upwards, stopping as he reached the next floor up, straining his ear to catch something right on the edge of hearing. A quiet hiss that built in volume over time, and Yu felt himself reaching with a trembling hand for the radio in his pocket. Sure enough, it was coughing out static and warbling sickly. He looked up at the corridors ahead, at the rooms that stretched on into infinity. He listened as something in the distance took trembling, uneven steps across the tiled floor, something wet smacking against a surface again and again.

Yu felt a knot in his stomach as the unseen figure lurched audibly somewhere in the dark. Gently placing the radio back in his pocket, he started to climb the stairs again as quietly as he could, almost crawling up them on his hands and knees. Each step pushed the noises farther and farther away, both that of the radio and of the thing in the darkness. By the time he had reached the top of the stairs, both had died away to nothing and he was left with nothing but the old familiar whistle of the wind.

The top floor of the hospital looked identical to the bottom, but was a definite improvement over what lay between them. Yu tried to remember the layout from the map, following the corridor to the right and taking a right turn, finding himself in a comparatively short corridor, ending in a large pair of doors. Faint light made it through the grime in the doors' windows. Yellow, electrical, artificial light. Even with no warning noises from his radio, he did his best to creep quietly down the hall so as not to alert whatever, if anything, was inside.

Finally he reached his destination, the doorway sitting between 3-3 and 3-4. Its nameplate had been hastily removed, and a series of chains were draped across it, looped through sturdy iron hoops at the corners of the frame. A heavy padlock sat around a length of the chains that had been wrapped tightly around the doors handle. Yu pressed down on the handle but, as expected, it wouldn't move even the tiniest amount. With no means of breaking the chain or picking the lock, he reasoned that he would have to make an attempt at finding the key. His heart dropped at the prospect. Even ignoring the unknown dangers of the thing on the floor below, there was a near infinite number of rooms for him to check. It could conceivable take him a lifetime to search everywhere, even assuming that the key was somewhere on the premises. He had no starting point.

Which, he realised, was not strictly true. He turned to the lit room at the end of the hall. It was, if not a sure bet at finding more information, then was at least his closest equivalent.

He edged down the corridor, ready to bolt at the first sign of trouble. Placing his hand on the right door's handle, he attempted to peer in through the window, but could make out nothing. Taking a moment to collect himself, he pressed down on the handle and gently pushed the door open.

The room beyond was well stocked, with a vast machine on the far side covered in ribbed pipes and meters, tanks of oxygen slotted within and dials all reading "off". A partition curtain had pulled aside, and a single bed sat at the centre, unmade. Yu's attention quickly turned to the room's sole occupant. A young man in a blue outfit, who turned to him as he entered the room, observing him with a kind of detached interest. If he was surprised by Yu's sudden arrival, then he didn't let it show in the slightest. They both stood in silence for a moment.

"I'm sorry, I didn't realise there was anybody in here." Yu finally said, a little weakly.

"Understandable," came the young man's response. "From what I can tell, the rest of this building is entirely deserted." His voice was deeper than what Yu had expected from looking at him, but it had a slight waiver, as though he were making it deeper on purpose. He seemed younger than he had on initial impressions too, still just a boy.

"I'm Yu," he said, extending his hand. The stranger arched one slender eyebrow as he stared at the outstretched palm.

"Interesting. Naoto Shirogane." He finally took Yu's hand and shook, squeezing just a fraction too tight. "What brings you here, Yu?"

"I'll be honest, at this point I'm not even sure." Yu admitted. "I'm here looking for my... For some people I met."

"Did they say they would meet you here?"

"No. In fact I think deep down there's no way they'd really be here. I just..." He trailed off, realising just how ridiculous it sounded when he said it out loud.

"Where else would they be?" Naoto's eyebrow was still arched quizically, and there was a slight tremor of caution in his voice.

"Trying not to think too hard about that," Yu answered, "this town doesn't exactly have a whole lot of safe places."

"I suppose not."

"What about you? Why the hospital?"

"I'm following up on some leads on an investigation."

"You're with the police?" Yu realised he hadn't even attempted to hide the surprise in his voice. "You seem a little..."

"There's three rooms that I've wanted to take a look at," Naoto said, quickly cutting him off. "One down the hall is locked up tight, this one and another I haven't checked yet."

"What's so special about them?"

"There were very few records available on patients here. In fact the only legible reports I could find were regarding three people injured in the same car accident. One was brought here, one to the locked room, and a third further on down the hall."

Yu opened his mouth to ask about the three patients. Specifically to ask about the one that had been in this room. He cast his eyes over the bed and realised for the first time just how small it was. Definitely not sized for an adult. He told himself that he really didn't want to know any details.

"Did you find a key?" He asked instead.

"A key?"

"For the chained up door."

"Not yet. Could be in here, could be in the third room, could be anywhere to be honest."

Yu cursed silently.

"It's 3-14, if you want to go take a look yourself." Naoto told him, taking a small notebook out of his pocket.

"Oh, I don't want to mess up your investigation." Yu said, holding his hands up. Naoto simply frowned slightly and turned his back to him, leafing through his notebook. There was a slight chill in the room that Yu knew had very little to do with the temperature.

With no desire to unintentionally offend the young investigator further, he retreated from the room and set off down the corridor for room 3-14.


	12. Death (Sickness Unto Foolish Death)

Room 3-14 waited patiently at the end of the corridor, almost beckoning Yu with its door slightly ajar. He approached slowly, the presence of the thing downstairs still fresh in his mind, creeping its way through the halls. Nothing lurched out at him or even made a sound as he finally reached his destination, peering into the crack in the open doorway.

A patient's room, all greys and blacks and dark blues with its lack of light. Yu gripped the door and pulled, giving himself enough room to enter and letting the dim light of the corridor filter in. It was just enough for him to find his way around without putting himself in danger, picking his way over a tray of small surgical instruments that had been scattered just inside the doorway.

The room stank. Not just the usual background level of gels and ammonia that permeated the rest of the building, but old and musky smells. Cigarette smoke clung to the air, and even in the faint light he was afforded, Yu could see brownish yellow stains on the bare mattress and in patches on the wall. Debris coated the floor, as though some small localised tornado had torn the room to shreds and cast everything to the side with chaotic abandon. On more than one occasion Yu put his hand down to steady himself walking around the room, only to find his fingers mere inches from discarded blades and shattered glass.

The windows had all been boarded up, a hurried and clumsy job that would probably not last much longer in the current level of damp. Chunks were missing from each one, potentially from age, though Yu could not find it in himself to rule out the idea of someone clawing at the wood in a desperate attempt to see daylight. He pushed the though from his mind and turned to the bedside table, two objects in glinting metal set out on it.

One key, unlabelled, but Yu knew exactly where he had to go with it. He picked it up and dropped it into his pocket, shivering as the cold of the metal penetrated cloth and pressed against his leg. To have it filled him with a sense of purpose. Finally things were working out.

The other item was a small silver picture frame, a little dented but still worlds apart from the decay that held everything else in the room. Yu lifted it and inspected the inset photo, the feeling leaving his fingers as he saw the picture staring back at him. Two figures, faded but clear enough to see, an adult man and a small child. He was lifting her up and smiling, though Yu could see something in the man's eyes that betrayed the smile, something steely and humourless. The child had no such smile, nor any features for that matter. Someone had scratched out the face with great care, score marks all heading in the same direction. A very slow, deliberate defacing of the photo. Yu turned his eyes back to the man. There was such a sadness there, as though Dojiima was-

Who? A lance of pain shot through Yu's skull and he almost dropped the picture frame, just about managing to focus enough to allow him to place it back down. A name had come to him. Dojima? There was familiarity there. Warmth, but at arm's length. Yu tipped the frame forwards, letting it land against the table, obscuring the photograph. Within moments, his headache had subsided. Why did this keep happening? What was causing these flashes of memories and pain that kept hunting him through the town? He realised that he had his fist tightened in frustration, an ache passing up his arm that he had to conciously release.

There was no way he could untangle just what was going on, and he knew that. Deep down, he also knew that there was some great puzzle piece waiting for him in the unmarked room. Whoever, or whatever, had been locked in there, it could be a huge part of remembering what had happened. He turned to make his way back to the corridor, stopping as he saw the words painted over the room's exit. Dark red and painted in a rush, they glared down at Yu as he left, stepping back into the hall.

HE IS NOT WHAT YOU THINK HE IS.

Yu marched on the locked room, fishing the key up out of his pocket. He considered going to the lit room at the end of the corridor, to report in to Naoto, but the thought left him quickly. There was something in here, something that he desperately needed to see. He slipped the key into the padlock holding the chains together, turning it and feeling a sense of apprehension and relief as the lock clicked, popping open. He unfurled the chains as quickly and as quietly as he could, placing them by the side of the door and facing it down. Taking a moment to compose himself, he pushed the handle of the door and slipped inside.

The lights overhead still functioned in this room, though only barely. They flickered and hummed, occasionally failing and plunging the room into darkness if only for a second or two. Yu glanced around at the room's contents. A single bed, clean but unmade, its sheets spilling out onto the floor. A chair on its side, cast away in the centre of the room. A window was open, letting in a chill though Yu was somewhat glad of the breeze, it was at least something to break up the claustrophobic air of the hospital.

What caught Yu's eye most though, was the television set that was set up against the far wall. Or, at least, most of a television set. An old, heavy CRT, the screen had been completely shattered and blackened, parts of the frame buckling inwards at the sides. The flickering lights glinted off the jagged edges of the glass, painting shadows along the inside of the television and making the smokey remains of the screen glisten. He knelt in front of the device, reaching his hand forwards. Something had struck the screen hard. Or something had been thrown. Or something had been pushed with great force. Many hands gripping and shoving.

"Was it worth it?"

Yu's stomach lurched for a moment, but he forced himself back to calm as Naoto squatted down beside him, serious eyes focussed on the shattered television screen. He lifted hs hat slightly, peering over the broken machine with seemingly little interest.

"Was... What?" Yu could only form a numb, murmured response.

"Coming here." Naoto responded, turning to him, "was it worth it? Did you find what you were looking for?"

Yu found his gaze spiralling towards the floor. "I don't know," he admitted, "I don't think so."

Naoto got to his feet, bringing out his notepad again and starting to scrawl away.

"Something horrible happened here." Yu muttered, glancing up at the boy. Naoto's gaze was fixed on the open window.

"Perhaps."

"I was so sure this was going to be the place where I-" Yu was cut off by a crackling noise that made his heart sink. His radio whined and whirred, coughing up static as he got to his shaking feet. "Naoto," he whispered, "Naoto, get away from the window."

It was on them in an instant. Stained white coat draped over a skeletal frame, limbs bending at awful angles as it scuttled its way in through the open window and onto the ceiling. What passed for a head bent backwards to look down at them, a single wide eye rolling back and forth. Patchwork skin bulged and tensed as it drew its arms up, hands ending in a vicious collection of saws and scalpels, syringes and sewing needles. A horrific cry bubbled up from inside it, the room filling with the stench of rotten fluids and bleach.

Yu grabbed Naoto by the arm and threw himself out of the door. They both collided with the far wall with a grunt and thud, picking themselves up and sprinting for the stairs. Behind them, the thing gave chase, groaning in frustration as it skittered across the ceiling, dislodging plaster and rotten wood with every step.

They made it to the stairwell, hurling themselves forward and down two steps at a time. Above them, the creature dropped, gurgling as it passed by and crashed into the stairs below them. Naoto shrieked as it lashed out on the way past, pale skin across his cheek splitting open. Yu was stunned for a moment, watching as the blood started to flow.

"Go!" Naoto bellowed, shoving him forwards. The thing had landed in a heap on the stairs below, so there was no hope of heading down to the main exit. He charged forwards, hoping they could find some means of escape on this floor. They passed door after door and on to a hallway where the walls were an endless gallery of small metal drawers. Most of them had their doors shut, but Yu still couldn't help but spy the occasional shelf peeking out from some of them, displaying long, black plastic bags.

They rounded a corner, met by a mound of gurneys piled up haphazardly. The two desperately started to pull the blockade apart, hands panicked as they pushed and pulled at the rusted equipment. Gradually, Naoto came to a stop. Yu looked over, heart pounding and mouth dry, to see the young man staring up at the ceiling. He followed his gaze to find the creature staring right back down at them, gripping the tiled ceiling and almost vibrating with excitement.

Within half a second, the thing had started to drop from the ceiling and Naoto had wheeled about, gripping Yu by the shoulders and shoving him as hard as possible. With a roar of exertion, Yu was pushed against the gurneys and out of harms way, the beast landing right where he had been before wrapping its limbs around Naoto. Yu called out in protest, the gurney he had landed on sliding away with the force of the impact. As the rusted wheels carried him away down the corridor, he heard Naoto's cries as the creature started its horrific work. Yu screwed his eyes shut, wanting to block out his last sight of his saviour.

The gurney beneath him picked up pace, rumbling faster and faster down the hospital corridor, moving impossibly on such a flat surface. He glanced ahead, just in time to see the yawning dark hole in the centre of the wall. He had no time to get a word out before the gurney slammed hard against the bricks, upending and throwing him up into the air. He sailed forwards, catching his feet against the rim of the hole, a metallic noise echoing all about him as he started to plummet downwards. He was in a tight space, dark and cold, rushing downwards as the light slipped quickly away. Air rushed past his ears until finally, suddenly, he collided with something at the bottom. The sound of a splash, pain coursing through his body, the swell of cold water around him and everything went black.


	13. The Hermit (Drops of Shame)

The world had fallen apart.

He had fallen with it.

Down into the black, seemingly without end.

He had no more concept of time or space, just that he was alone and that it had been this way for a long time. Pressure built on all sides of him, tight around his face and wrapping across his throat. A little longer, surely, and it would all be choked out of him.

It was better this way, wasn't it? This is what the town had been trying to show him all along. This was the best course. For him. For everyone.

The last threads of air would burn away in his chest and he would be gone. He would sink right to the bottom and never be found. The thought didn't feel good but it did feel right.

There was no apologising for what had happened. The lives that had been upended and cut short since he had arrived in Inaba. He thought of the tiny, empty bed in the hospital. Remembered the hollow shell of the television set with its brutally cracked screen. If there couldn't be justice, there could at least be retribution.

He could let go in this instant and let himself become the dirt and silt at the bottom of the water. He could breathe deep and make sure no one else got hurt. He could end it all and never know why he was brought here.

Naoto's voice scratched at the inside of his skull.

"Was it worth it?"

He would never solve it. He would never learn his reason for being brought here. While the chances of an answer existing in the waking world seemed to grow smaller and smaller, they remained a resolute and certain zero here. As cold and hard and sure as a headstone. There was a certain comfort in that. In the control of ending it here on his own terms.

Slowly and painfully, he started to open his eyes.

There were many things he was unsure of about himself and his past, but he had learned one very simple truth.

He did not give up.

It was just as dark as with his eyes closed, cold and black and stinging as he blinked furiously. Far above him, something glinted in the void, warm and red. Chest burning, he reached out with his arms and kicked his legs furiously, propelling himself upwards as hard and fast as he could. The waters around him protested, thick and heavy, pulling him downwards for every few inches of climb he managed. He screamed in anger, a torrent of bubbles floating up to the surface, silently venting his rage into the world of air. A few seconds later and he joined it, breaching the skin of the water and letting oxygen rush into his aching body.

He looked about himself and saw the shore, kicked for it, launched himself for dry land on limbs of rotted timbers and string. He dragged himself up onto the concrete, weeping at the pains coursing through his body. He rolled himself onto his back and stared up at the night sky, breathing heavy. Sleep came for him and he gladly passed into unonsciousness. Aching. Broken. Alive.

When Yu woke up, the sky had turned from its usual pale and sickly grey to an ominously dark shade. Almost black with heavy clouds that flowed into one another and poured themselves over the town below. The rain was thick and slapped against his body and the concrete around him lazily, clinging to his skin and cooling it. He raised a hand and wiped a drop from his eyes, wincing at the stinging sensation it left him with, looking up at the black, oily stain it left on his fingers.

Yu pulled himself up into a seated position, letting the rain patter down against his head and over his back rather than into his eyes. Hunched over, he gazed out over the river he had pulled himself from, its black waters rippling from the downpour. His vision blurred as he stared at the water, turning his attention to an immense object breaking its surface. The back end of a large vehicle, a delivery truck, swaying slowly in the faint current. Flames danced across its body, licking the surface of the river and sending out hundreds of reflections in red and gold. The mass of metal gurgled as it took on water, sinking into the depths slowly, painfully slowly.

He could feel the warmth of the fire from his position on the riverbank, and he found himself thankful for it. His clothes were soaked through, and the rain had a biting cold to it that irritated his flesh. The smell of fuel and rust filled his nostrils, smoke starting to billow across the river to reach him. He could wait here a while. The rain wasn't going anywhere and, with the pains that still wracked his limbs, neither was he. Yu decided he would wait until the truck went under the water before he set out again. In answer, the vehicle gurgled again, slipping another half a foot into the darkness. Moments passed and he prayed it would stay above the surface forever, warming him with the fire until every last ache had left him and beyond, so he would never have to get to his feet and leave.

From behind him, a short scrape of something against stone made him tense. Some figure shifted its weight, dragging feet softly a few metres behind and above him. Yu grit his teeth and turned himself around, the concrete below his hands scratching his palms as he did so. On the stairs leading up from the riverbank, a single man sat and looked out over the water with very little interest on his face. If he had noticed Yu, he made no move to acknowledge him. He simply sat and watched with vacant, empty eyes reflecting the ever shrinking fire, nestled in the shade of a white cap.

"Hell of a day." The man said quietly, not looking away from the sinking wreck. He sounded tired, faint, fading into the air as though he were sitting further away than he actually appeared.

Yu didn't answer, he just watched and waited.

"Hell of a day." The man repeated, muttering it to himself.

"You should get somewhere dry." Yu told him, voice cracking as he did so. The man finally turned and looked at him, surprise creeping into his expression.

"You feel it too, hmm?" He held out a hand, turning his attention the streams of black water patterning his skin. "Thought it was just me. It will pass, I'm sure. Storm can't last forever."

"I've been asleep, how long has it been raining?"

"Since I got here." The stranger said, closing his hand. "Longer than I care to think."

"Do you live here?" Yu asked him.

"I did."

"And let me guess. You got called back, not sure why?"

"No, I know exactly why." The man smiled. The most empty, forced smile that Yu thought he had ever seen. "I'm just dragging my feet a little to get there. I'm in no rush. What about you?"

"I thought I was going to find out," Yu said, slowly getting to his feet. "Now I'm not so sure."

The man nodded, turning back to the wreck in the river. Only the bumper had stayed above water, a few scattered flames dying out on the surface around it. He took his cap off and wiped it across his forehead before replacing it, letting out a long, quiet sigh.

"My name's Namatame, by the way. Namatame Taro."

"I'm Yu."

Namatame smiled again. With a final sigh, the truck disappeared into the river, the fire dying for good. The ripples of the raindrops camoflaged the disturbance on the surface so that within a handful of moments, it would be impossible to tell anything had even been there in the first place.

"Yes," he said quietly, "yes I suppose you are. That does certainly make sense." He stood up, gradually, his back audibly cracking as he did so. "I think its time we were going, Yu."

"Where?"

"Somewhere dry. Somewhere we both need to be."

"And where's that?" Yu asked, but his newfound companion was already on his way, turning around and heading up the steps. Yu hurried after before he got out of sight, stepping up onto the road above, looking at the rising buildings of Inaba emerging from the rain and fog. With a sigh of his own, Yu followed, leaving the river behind.


End file.
